A journalist from France Televisions was assaulted on Sunday in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray while covering the aftermath of a shooting that occurred the day before in this city of the Rouen metropolitan area (Seine-Maritime, Normandy), reports this Tuesday the National Union of Journalists (SNJ).
The journalist was "very slightly injured" and France 3 filed a complaint Tuesday morning, indicates a source close to the investigation.
The journalist from France 3 Rouen "was cowardly assaulted during a filming", described the SNJ in a press release.
"He received a blow to the back of the neck as he was about to record."
He left the scene immediately with the image reporter journalist (JRI) accompanying him.
The journalist and the JRI “had nevertheless taken all the necessary precautions with the residents they had met in the morning to establish discussions, before taking out the camera.
But the aggressor arose by insulting the team before hitting our colleague ”, underlines another text, inter-union, distributed internally.
"It is an isolated act, of course, but a manifest and targeted act against our mission to inform", note the unions.
Insulted during an anti-sanitary pass demonstration
The day before the report, Saturday around 7.45 p.m., two men on motorcycles had stopped in a street and had fired in the direction of an individual, hit in particular in the head.
They also made another victim, injured in the back, before setting off again on a motorcycle.
The two injured were taken to the University Hospital Center (CHU) in Rouen and the case was referred to the Judicial Police (PJ).
"The team victim of this attack had already suffered multiple insults the day before during an anti-health pass demonstration", underlines the SNJ according to which, "for a few years, the shooting conditions have become tougher, journalists have been attacked, physically or verbally ”.
France 3 also saw the walls of its station in Caen tagged while its occupants were insulted by the demonstrators on Saturday.
Read alsoWhy do some anti-health pass protesters want so much from the media?
Several journalists have suffered physical or verbal attacks since the start of the mobilization against the health pass which brings together tens of thousands of people every Saturday, in the middle of summer (214,845 last Saturday, 237,000 the previous one).
BFMTV and Agence France Presse (AFP) in Paris, France 2 in Marseille, local media such as Radio BIP / Media 25 in Besançon, Est Républicain, Dauphiné Libéré or the premises of France Bleu: the phenomenon seems to affect everyone the actors of the profession.
“The right to information remains an intangible principle of our democracy and we will always be alongside our colleagues,” insisted the SNJ.
